State of Mind

This game heavily reminds me of former Playstation exclusives by Quantic Dream, Beyond: Two Souls, Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. It is a very narrative driven game, or putting it very bluntly, a long cutscene with tons of conversations sparsely sprinkled with bouts of player interactivity. This does not make it a bad game. It makes it a casual, sometimes interactive walk and an acquired taste. Or at least a very polarizing game. I'm leaning towards the recommended side.
It's a cyberpunk thriller set in 2084 about transhumanism and everything that it brings. Think Blade Runner, old and new mixed with a few more things, The Matrix, I,Robot and a few more. I even got a hint of Otherland: City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams. The game's world building is excellent, bringing two immersive locations, dystopian Berlin and weirdly utopian City5, to life. The minimal, polygonal visuals and the overall aesthetics are very stylish and do not break the immersion of the game's weighty story. The game's soundtrack is also very good, further enhancing the joy of wandering around the locations.
The story itself is good, characters are well developed and voice acting is well done. The pacing could have been better. Sometimes it drags on too long and sometimes it dumps a giant exposition bucket with 15 facts at once on your head. But, it's just a minor gripe.
Gameplay is rather linear with not much player choice, most of the story is set no matter what you answer. There are lots of things to read and examine, filling out the world, but not much of it is actually useful in the context of progressing. Since the game is the story, I won't mention anything about it. Just know it's worth going through it at least once. It is an adventure game in a sense, but there are no actual puzzles or inventory use. What little of it there is, is very minimal and not challenging in any way.
One real issue I have is the very weird and wonky movement, like they were trying to somehow simulate the occasional jerkiness of people's movements, but it didn't translate into the game very well. It takes getting used to.
The game played smoothly and I've had no technical difficulties or crashes. Only once did the game bug out. When I was trying to take a screenshot, I wanted to position myself to get another character's face into the frame and that character moved, getting me stuck in place. Restarting the checkpoint solved the problem.
If you've played any Quantic Dream games, Indigo Prophecy was on the PC ages ago, or anything of theirs on the Playstation (or the Epic Store now), you'll probably like this game. For anyone else and fans of cyberpunk/sf, the world, story and characters deserve to be seen and heard at least once. The asking price is a bit of an issue for a game like this, but if you can get it on sale, you'll be more than satisfied.
Take a peek inside the newly opened Cabinet of Curiosities if you like to walk off the beaten path and only sometimes return to the main roads. You might find something worth exploring. And if you do, thank you for the visit.
Follow the Average Achievement Hunter Curator for reviews and useful information on Steam achievements: I finished the game with 21/34 achievements. There are lots of missable and limited achievements, but all of them can be done by loading checkpoints and chapters. The game does a good job autosaving and only two achievements require replaying larger bits of the game. None of the achievements are difficult and usually require making different choices in the playthrough.

Daedalic
They are a Hamburg-based video game developer studio who have been active for almost 15 years. Their point-and-click adventure games, such as the Deponia series, are well-known by many. I'm looking forward to their Gollum game (slated for next year) which is probably a big step for such a studio. State of Mind is their first product I laid my hands on just recently.
Story
Welcome to 2048 Berlin! A world increasingly populated by machines; machines that help us in our everyday lives including android assistants that can serve as tutors or be the maid in a household. Not for Richard Nolan, though, our protagonist and journalist who despises all. Following a car accident (shown in the intro) and the tutorial level in the hospital Richard returns home only to find it empty without his wife and kid. Much to this annoyance the family now has its own android. Disregarding anything the robot says Richard sets out to find his loves ones.
Cyberpunk
The setting is great! I love the genre and it reminded me of Deus Ex a couple of times. You know, a world with some great technological inventions, yet, it isn't as utopistic as one would believe. Fans of the Witcher series will immediately accept Richard as he is voiced by none other but Doug Cockle, our very own Geralt of Rivia.
Later on we are introduced to Adam Nolan. His apartment is elsewhere but its layout is exactly the same as that of Richard. The question is why. He has his child with him but he needs to be taken to the hospital regularly and his wife is also absent due to work. What is shown as dark and foreboding in Richard's world it is perfectly paralleled by Adam's location: the colours are vivid and everybody seems to be happy. Even the office buildings (their place of work) seem to oppose one another: while Richard is given the sack Adam receives a promotion (yet, upon entry he doesn't even know the girl's name who has just given him a compliment).
Gameplay
We control Richard and Adam from the 3rd person in an extremely linear way. While almost everything in the world can be scanned and interacted with to a certain degree it is really just one option we have to make the story progress. There are several locations but these are relatively small and there are many we return to. Things get a little bit more interesting when the two protagonists meet and the holo pin board in their study allows us to switch between them on the go.
There is no combat or QTE sequence here. It is impossible to fail the game and in case you got stuck in a new location remember to go through your contacts as you might have missed a message or a call from someone. I found the low-poly art very appealing and making progress throughout the chapters felt like watching a TV series. Too bad that I binge-watched it - the writing is not the strongest side of the game and as it slows down after a couple of chapters you have to have patience to get that extra momentum to be able to proceed.
Summary
State of Mind is a good game. Not a great one but an interesting one indeed. Its narrative is somewhat mediocre but the setting (and the music!) is superb. We also get two very satisfying endings. Overall, a walkthrough takes roughly 9 hours to complete which is decent. I didn't feel like jumping in once more, though, so for the missing 'cheevos I went with the chapter selection.

State of Mind won’t be for everyone but it is fantastic when it sticks to it’s strengths. It has a very good story; good graphics; a great world and great characters. It’s puzzles are where it falls short. Daedalic Entertainment is know for it’s 2D Point and Click games but this is the first third person game I have seen them do so maybe it just couldn’t make it’s puzzles translate over genres. Luckily the majority of the puzzles aren’t bad or even difficult. It has 2 puzzles I disliked but they weren’t difficult so much as they were tedious. The story as mentioned was one of the strong points as you try to piece together your past in order to find your family. One thing I will say is few games have made me dislike the main character as much of State of Mind made me dislike Richard Nolan. I have played as characters that cut old ladies throats for a few coins and I found more I liked about them then I did Richard. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, if it was then bravo I say. He was just a child like man who spends more time looking for his family then he asks why he is doing it or if he even deserves them. He treats his friends poorly; never accepts blame; is just an all around dbag. The only times he showed a little humility or kindness was the few times I was allowed to choose a dialogue choice that gave that to him. Again, if intentional then that is well done. The dialogue is well done and the choices at least give me the feeling of having decent control over most of the story. The characters were interesting and made me want to get to know them better. Lydia was not only my favourite but had a very memorable scene where you take control of her as a VR cam-girl for a scene. It was genuinely creepy like few other scenes in games. The graphics has a great style to them that was like a mishmash of cell shaded graphics and realism. The people and clothing were mainly cell shaded but the world detail was mainly in a realistic style and it made for an interesting blend. The world detail was very good as homes felt lived in and the city felt alive usually. In particular the rain soaked sidewalks of Queens New York was fantastic. The voice acting was also well done.
I played State of Mind on Linux. It never crashed on me. I used version 1.2 of the game. It did have one glitch one time where an NPC blocked me into a desk and I couldn’t move away. I had to reload the save and stand further from her when I spoke to her. Another issue was the audio at points got low for a few seconds and then went back to normal. This was always in just one ear of my headphones. It only happened a few times throughout but is an issue anyway. The game uses the Unreal engine. It has a 60 FPS lock that can’t be changed. Alt-Tab worked without issue. There are 4 settings for AA; a Vsync toggle and 4 other graphics options. The performance is usually great sticking to 60 FPS but there are points where I experienced drops in frame rate for 1-2 seconds. It could drop to anywhere from the 20’s to 4 FPS. This was random and brief. I noticed the GPU usage was frequently all over the place going from 99 to 60 to 0 to 4, etc. The game uses OpenGL. The game uses an auto save system but they’re pretty frequent.
Disk Space Used: 19.56 GB
GPU Usage: 0-99 %
VRAM Usage: 1.23-1.89 GB
RAM Usage: 3.2-6.3 GB
Frame Rate: 4-60 FPS
Settings Used: All Epic; motion blur and Vsync off @ 1920x1080
I paid $42.18 CAD for this and feel it is worth every penny. I finished it in 9 hours and 48 minutes. Some people will probably say that there is not enough “game play” to State of Mind but I find that the story is so strong I don’t mind plus I like games in this genre anyway. There are light puzzles throughout but no combat or action. The dialogue and choices are the main draw. If you enjoy walking simulators or story driven games in general there is a lot here for you. If you enjoy puzzles mainly then you still may like it.
My Score: 9/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 5700 XT 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 20.0.4 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 19.0.2 | Mate 1.24 | Kernel 5.6.3-2-MANJARO

63 / 100
A slow burning yet fascinating story that I found hindered by the chop-n-change nature of the storytelling. First half of the game was hard to follow, and was a struggle to motivate myself to continue playing at times. Once over that hump though, State of Mind came home strong leaving me thinking of the implications of my choices well after I pressed exit.
+ Feels Surreal, Dreamlike.
+ Voice acting is high quality & emotive.
+ Low-Poly graphical style was off-putting at first, but does give the game a unique feel.
+ Some great camera work puts you into the space & draws out details in the scene.
+ Rewarding story arcs.
- No real gameplay challenges outside of navigating the UI. Bit hollow.
- Worlds/Environments created look good, but lack any interaction or vibrancy.
- Gameplay in general feels padded out, going over same areas (like the apartment).
- Needed tighter narrative focus to help understand character motivations earlier.
- Poor engine performance in certain scenes (sub 30 frames on 1080TI).
- No manual save system. Had to redo several sections several times as a result.
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I have mixed feelings about State of Mind. However, I would recommend it with a few reservations.
On the positive side, the story is actually pretty good. I'd liken it to a mix of iRobot, Deus Ex, and Black Mirror all wrapped up into one. So for me (loving all of those), the story was a big win. The music, characters, and overall thematic elements are fantastic. Perhaps a bit cliche, but well done none-the-less.
With that said, there are two major downsides. First, this isn't really a "game", but rather more of an interactive story. Nothing wrong with that, but I was actually expecting a puzzle style game like other games from Daedelic, so it was a slight surprise. The controls are pretty bad as well, reminding me of a 90s style game.
But the biggest downside to State of Mind is its incredibly slow start. It BARELY kept my interest for the first 5 hours of so. That's saying a lot for me, since I really don't mind slower games, tv, or movies. But this was taking it to the next level in terms of dragging on the introduction to the characters. This aspect may be a deal breaker for many people, and based off of the achievement percentage that I saw, not many people have actually finished the game.
At any rate, if you like distopian sci-fi stories and aren't expecting much from the gameplay, State of Mind is a pretty good relaxing story that becomes very engaging once you have gotten past the arduous introduction.
(as a side note, my game time is not indicative of the time it takes to complete the game. I have a tendency to pause games for hours or even days at a time)

State of Mind is a Sci-Fi thriller game with beautiful polygon-style and a good story that kept me invested till the end.
Pros:
- Great artstyle, and it works really well with game's theme and story, love it
- Good OST, ranges from cyberpunk (obviously) to Sadcore
- Captivating story with interesting side characters and good plot twists along the way, makes you want to know more about the characters and the world
- Superb voice acting, as Daedalic Entertainment is known for that I suppose
- Well optimized, never crashed
- Good cyberpunk world with a dark tone and a realistic vision of the world
Cons:
- Even though I said the OST is good, there is one song that they keep playing on loop multiple times throughout the game (and the menu) and it was driving me crazy, hated that music.
- The first hour is somewhat boring, a lot of exposition , but after that the story picks up
- They could have just removed multiple sections of the game as they were redundant and didn't have an affect on the game whatsoever, just an excuse to make the game longer I suppose
- The protagonist is somewhat of a dick sometimes, as there were certain choice that you had to pick between that makes you look like an asshole eitherway, but I am pretty sure that was intentional at the start of the game
In the end, the game took me about 10 hours to complete and I really enjoyed it, despite the cons.
verdict: 8/10
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I'm going to list the negatives of this game first. As if you're able to push past these things, it's a very enjoyable game, especially on sale. Full price, it's a bit harder to recommend.
The overall setting is rather generic and banal. It's very character driven. If you don't find some connection with the characters, this story isn't going to work for you.
The game is extremely linear. You do get to make decisions that will affect some things. Some more dramatic than others. But, the vast majority of the narrative is set.
The character movement is.. to be described succinctly — wonky. Any and all of the characters you'll control will have a terrible time turning around (I was begging for a RE4 style turn around function the whole game.) They also tend to favor going in random semi circles when trying to go left or right.
The pacing is awful. The game slows to a crawl at points then speeds up and reveals 10 things at once. And then alters that pattern throughout.
Some of the puzzles are quite simple and occasionally don't really make any sense.
Now, if you're still interested. This is a good story. And it's worth playing.
"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane." — Phillip K. D*ck
Due to the core of this game being such that going through the story yourself is what the game actually is. I can't really say anything specific. What I can say is that you'll play as Richard Nolan, voiced by the great Doug Cockle himself (Geralt of Rivia). Richard is a journalist. An accused luddite, insofar that he has written articles about his anti robotic pseudo agenda. And that's about all I'm going to give you.
It's got a little bit of The Matrix, a little bit of SOMA, some Detroit: Become Human, a pinch of I, Robot, hints of a small game called Divide and then sprinkle some “Remember Me” and Minority Report on top of all that.
Some of those are dead on, and some are purposefully misleading.
THE GIST:
State of Mind is understandably polarizing. But, if you like cyberpunk and heavily story driven games then I can't say you'd go wrong here. The low-poly art is pretty good, too.
Post Script: I'm not sure if they intended a Metal Gear Solid vibe to this whole game. But when you have the gravelly voice of Doug Cockle repeatedly talking about there being too many surveillance cameras.. I gotta wonder.
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